


The Survivors

by Aegialia



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 00:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3830242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegialia/pseuds/Aegialia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a world out there where Nathan Ford makes all the right choices. In this world, he walks out of Highpoint Tower with his family and the Black Book and a future. He gets a wife and a happy ending. In that world, Eliot Spencer finds what he’s always needed. Sophie Devereuax buries her past and walks into a real future. Alec Hardison keeps doing what makes him happy with the people that make him happy. Parker becomes a person that she’s content with. </p>
<p>But not this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Survivors

There’s a world out there where Nathan Ford makes all the right choices. In this world, he walks out of Highpoint Tower with his family and the Black Book and a future. He gets a wife and a happy ending. In that world, Eliot Spencer finds what he’s always needed. Sophie Devereuax buries her past and walks into a real future. Alec Hardison keeps doing what makes him happy with the people that make him happy. Parker becomes a person that she’s content with. 

But not this time. 

In this world, Nate is smart, but just not smart enough. In this world, Hardison gets shot while getting down the elevator shaft, just a graze but far enough from the bottom that he’s the first to die in the van, clutching Eliot, who was hit dragging him out the back. In this world, Sophie drowns, dozens of aliases dying with her. 

In this world, when Agent Casey asks if it was worth it, Nate looks at the corpse of the man that was almost a son to him and can’t even shake his head.

Parker gets out with the Black Book by the skin of her teeth, running back to the brew pub and waiting for someone to come back. 

Sterling doesn’t tell anyone that she got the Black Book, which surprises Nate, but he’s still able really give a damn. Sterling pulls in favors and deals and somehow wrangles it so that Nate can go the funerals. Maggie is there, and Tara and Archie Leach and Amy from the brewpub and others, people he’s never seen before and a few he has. Maggie hugs him and asks about Parker with worried eyes. Archie does as well, but Nate doesn’t really have an answer for either of them. Tara glares at him throughout the whole service and corners him afterwards.

“I knew you were going to get her killed. She got a lot dumber when you were around,” she says. Nate shrugs. He knows what he’s done and there’s really nothing anyone can do to make him feel worse.

He doesn’t see Parker there, but that’s not shocking. She’ll come back at some point if she needs to.

He ends up seeing her two weeks later, at three in the morning in his prison cell. After five years of turning around to find her in unexpected places, he should be more prepared for this, but he’ll admit, he jumps a bit. 

“What do I do now?” Parker asks, which is what he was afraid she’d do. She looks awful, exhausted, almost feral. He scoots over on the bed so she can sit down, honestly he’s surprised she’s standing. 

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” he says, knowing it isn’t enough and not going to help at all.

“Hurt them. All the people that made them die. That’s what I want to do, but I can’t because we’re the good guys and even if we’re not really a ‘we’ anymore I shouldn’t do that because it is bad,” she says, the last bit coming out rehearsed and stilted. He can’t really argue with that, no matter how forced it sounds and he doesn’t know what to tell her, so they sit in silence for a few awkward minutes.

“What have you been doing?” he asks at last.

“Nothing. I’ve been in the brew pub. Amy brings me food sometimes,” she pauses, glancing at the floor. “She’s a good person.”

“So are you,” Nate says. Usually, he doesn’t try to work things like this with Parker directly, he leaves- he left that sort of thing to Sophie, but she’s not here now, so he’ll have to do it.

“I’m not,” she replies. A few seconds later, she bursts out, “Hardison should have been the one to make it out. Eliot would agree. He was the best out of us, he should be alive.”

Nate was expecting something like this, because he knows out of the two of them, Sophie should have survived, she deserved to, and he’s enough like Parker and knew Eliot well enough to know exactly how and why she’d come to the same conclusion, the same one Eliot would have made if he wasn’t dead and buried.

“That’s not a productive way to think,” he says and yes, that’s probably useless but he really doubts that any feel-good sentiment is going to pass through her ears without any effect. 

“What are you going to do now?” she asks.

“I lost everything once already and then made myself a new life. I don’t think I can do that again.” 

He hesitates for a minute and then he has to ask, “Did you get the Black Book?”

Her mouth curls up in a snarl, but she nods.

“Then that’s what you do. Go find some bad guys and destroy them. You’ve always been the strongest, you can go on without us,” Nate tells her and hopes it’s true.

“What if I can’t?” she asks, quieter than she’s been for the whole discussion. She’s always been the last to trust and the first to flee, never attached to anything enough to slow her down, but now, now. She loved Hardison, she loved Eliot, she loved Sophie, and they’d loved her and she lost it all and he knows how hard it must be for her to just wake up. 

“You can,” he says and even if she can’t, he knows that going back to theft or to a normal life would be even worse for her. “If you need help, you’ve got Archie and Tara to call.” 

He doesn’t mention that she can call him whenever, but he hopes that by this point it’s implied. 

Parker nods, tightly, sharply, and stands up. He stands up with her. 

“I miss them,” she whispers. He nods and pulls her forward quickly into a hug. It doesn’t last more than a few seconds, but he feels more at peace then than he has since he saw Eliot get shot. She pulls back, crossing her arms. He sits back down and she’s gone as soon as she came. 

Three months later, while reading the paper, he comes across the story of a payday loan company getting taken down in a bizarre and complicate series of events involving an albino gorilla and a donut food truck and for the first time since he left Hightpoint Tower, Nathan Ford smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Why did I write a fic entirely from the perspective of the character in Leverage that I love the least? Who knows. Anyways, sorry, this wasn't very well written and sad. Talk to me on tumblr at aegialia about this ridiculous, wonderful show.


End file.
